George Lucas lands in Chicago the week his museum takes final shape

George Lucas flew from High Meadow Farms Airport in New Jersey to Chicago Midway International Airport on June 15, a 1-hour-31-minute hop in his Gulfstream V (N138GL) that touched down just after 4 p.m. local time. The trip follows a week of cross-country movement: Lucas had been in New Jersey the day before, in Los Angeles on June 12, and in Richmond, Virginia, on June 10.

The same week Lucas lands in Chicago, his long-gestating Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is in its final construction push ahead of a September 22 opening in Los Angeles, per the Vogue feature published this spring. Chicago was once a finalist for the museum’s location, with a lakefront site that stalled over a parks lawsuit before Lucas shifted the project to Exposition Park near his alma mater, USC. The $1 billion, 300,000-square-foot institution will house roughly 1,200 works from Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson’s collection, including Norman Rockwell paintings and Star Wars production art.

Lucas has flown into Chicago multiple times before: on June 8, his jet arrived from Buchanan Field in California, and recent flights show regular shuttles between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The pattern suggests ongoing business for an octogenarian filmmaker who, despite selling Lucasfilm in 2012, remains deeply involved in real-world storytelling — this time, in concrete and fiberglass.